Healthcare

Nursing and the NHS

When she was recovering from major surgery in 2010, and feeling abandoned by the nurses who were meant to be looking after her, Christina made a vow to do something about the state of nursing in Britain. She made a “Four Thought” for Radio 4, which is now being used as a teaching tool in hospitals and universities, and a short film for The One Show, shown to coincide with the release of the Francis Report.

She spent months looking into the state of nursing in Britain, trying to look beyond the anecdotes to the evidence. She talked to nurses, doctors, patients, managers and the under-secretary of state for health. She drew all this together for a special report in TheIndependent and i that ran for a week. This provoked a bigger response from readers than anything the papers had published before. This work was shortlisted for the Orwell prize 2013.

Christina has argued with the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing on the Today programme, and has given many talks to nurses, trainee nurses, surgeons and other NHS staff. She was also asked to do a guest blog for The King’s Fund, about the future of healthcare, which had a bigger response than any blog they had published before.

She has chaired public engagement events on the future of the NHS, advised healthcare organisations and been journalist in residence at the Department of Health and Social Care at the University of Surrey. She also talks about health in her book, The Art of Not Falling Apart.

About

Christina Patterson is a writer and broadcaster. A former columnist at The Independent and Director of the Poetry Society, she now writes for The Sunday Times and The Guardian about society, culture, politics, books and the arts.